Gabriel Fauré: The Songs and their Poets

Graham Johnson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351566100
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

The career of Gabriel Faur's a composer of songs for voice and piano traverses six decades (1862-1921); almost the whole history of French m die is contained within these parameters. In the 1860s Faur the lifelong prot of Camille Saint-Sa was a suavely precocious student; he was part of Pauline Viardot's circle in the 1870s and he nearly married her daughter. Pointed in the direction of symbolist poetry by Robert de Montesquiou in 1886, Faur as the favoured composer from the early 1890s of Winnarretta Singer, later Princesse de Polignac, and his songs were revered by Marcel Proust. In 1905 he became director of the Paris Conservatoire, and he composed his most profound music in old age. His existence, steadily productive and outwardly imperturbable, was undermined by self-doubt, an unhappy marriage and a tragic loss of hearing. In this detailed study Graham Johnson places the vocal music within twin contexts: Faur own life story, and the parallel lives of his many poets. We encounter such giants as Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine, the patrician Leconte de Lisle, the forgotten Armand Silvestre and the Belgian symbolist Charles Van Lerberghe. The chronological range of the narrative encompasses Faur first poet, Victor Hugo, who railed against Napoleon III in the 1850s, and the last, Jean de La Ville de Mirmont, killed in action in the First World War. In this comprehensive and richly illustrated study each of Faur 109 songs receives a separate commentary. Additional chapters for the student singer and serious music lover discuss interpretation and performance in both aesthetical and practical terms. Richard Stokes provides parallel English translations of the original French texts. In the twenty-first century musical modernity is evaluated differently from the way it was assessed thirty years ago. Faur's no longer merely a 'Master of Charms' circumscribed by the belleque. His status as a great composer of timeless

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword and Acknowledgements
• Songs through a Life: An Overview
• Chapter One: An Indifference to Success
• Chapter Two: Second Empire and First Songs
• Chapter Three: War and Peace on Parnassus
• Chapter Four: Chez Mme P. Viardot-Garcia
• Chapter Five: 1878, A Transitional Year of Song
• Chapter Six: Bachelor and Husband - The Silvestre Years
• Chapter Seven: Crisis and Decadence
• Chapter Eight: Fauré and Paul Verlaine (I)
• Chapter Nine: Fauré and Paul Verlaine (II)
• Chapter Ten: Crossing the Divide - Towards the Late Style
• Chapter Eleven: Interlude: The Silent Gift
• Chapter Twelve: Fauré and Charles Van Lerberghe (I)
• Chapter Thirteen: Fauré and Charles Van Lerberghe (II)
• Chapter Fourteen: Mirages and Horizons
• Chapter Fifteen: Some Notes on the Performance of Fauré’s Songs
• Chapter Sixteen: The Pianists Workshop (wherein Singers are Always Welcome)
• Appendix 1: The Songs of Fauré in their Opus Number Groupings
• Appendix 2: The Tonalities of Faurés mèlodies
• General Index
• Index of Poets and Settings
• Index of Song Titles